Muscat: Road traffic injuries are among the leading causes of death and life-long disability in Oman, according a report by the Ministry of Health (MOH). In its Annual Health Report, MOH said there were 545 death cases in 2018 due to road accidents in the country. In a statement online, MOH said: "Road accidents are a key factor in increasing the number of injuries, disabilities, and deaths in the Sultanate. Statistics of these accidents show that the magnitude of the problem remains huge." Although the number of road accidents had declined in 2018, the number of injuries and deaths remain high,” Ministry said. “The MOH institutions have received (466) road accident-related deaths before they arrived in any health facility or prior to admission in the wards, in addition to 79 deaths at the hospitals among inpatients of road accidents," the ministry added. The data of MOH hospitals’ inpatients show 4 out of 10,000 persons were admitted due to hypertension diseases, while 6 out of 10,000 persons were admitted due to diabetes. Cardiovascular diseases caused by about 26 per cent of hospitals total deaths and 10 per cent of the deaths are caused by cancer. The report indicates that there is a steady increase in non-communicable diseases rate where it reached 44.2 per cent among outpatient clinics, and 39.8 per cent among inpatients.